However, there were several cartoons Jones directed where an incompetent Daffy was pretty funny—whenever Daffy was playing a role. One is The Scarlet Pumpernickel (released in 1950).
Mike Maltese loved swashbuckling films, and in his story Daffy (as the aforementioned Pumpernickel) gets to swash and buckle and smash into things and poke himself with a pin to reach the top of an impossibly tall castle. He also, foppish that he is, snorts some snuff. Alack! He’s not refined enough to avoid sneezing. Note the eye take in the frame below. Then Daffy turns into streaks of colour as Jones cuts to a long shot.
The credited animators are Ken Harris, Lloyd Vaughan, Phil Monroe and Ben Washam.
Mel Blanc voiced Elmer in that scene. He hated doing it but you can hardly tell it was Mel because of what a great actor he was.
ReplyDeleteTHAT'S because Elmer only speaks briefly, like in 1944's "Stupid Cupid" where Mel Blanc also played him, but here Elmer is just doing a cameo.
DeleteAs a solo here, Daffy isn't totally incompetent -- unlike Wile E., his parachute actually works when it opens, and he does seem to be holding his own in the fencing duel with Sylvester (until the volcano erupts). It was moving on after this cartoon, where Jones and Maltese paired him either against Bugs or with Porky that the totally inept/completely egotistical Daffy emerges (and survives fairly well until about 1962 or so).
ReplyDelete"Good Noose" is the short that *really* marks Daffy's decline.
DeleteUnfortunately, this great cartoon is butchered in TV airings. Not only is this bit usually excised, but even worse, the closing "suicide" payoff gag as well, resulting in the ending not making much sense. What a shame.
ReplyDeleteYeah, those cuts (in the current Boomerang runs) bug me - but it's *almost* clever how it cuts from Daffy incredulously saying "Is that ALL?" right to "That's All, Folks!"
DeleteWait, they cut the snuff scene? The versions I usually see edit the siicide part at the end.
Delete“ In Chuck Jones’ hands, Daffy Duck morphed into an incompetent braggart”
ReplyDeletePal, I don’t think you know this but Daffy was intended to be a more selfish character overtime. Watch something like Draftee Daffy, a cartoon where Daffy is shown to be cowardly like Jones’s version and tell me that that character magically became selfish.
Plenty of the ideas that people had associated with Jones’s version had already been explored with other directors. Just because Jones popularized them with his version of the character doesn’t mean that Jones was the only one to change Daffy. Acting like nobody decided to change Daffy into a selfish person until Jones came about is really shortsighted.
If you want to see a character that Jones and Maltese changed first, look at their more passive Bugs but Daffy? It was not a concept that they invented, end of story.
I will agree that in some of his later cartoons, he was a tad bit too mean.